One voice, every audience
A writer who is almost always the vendor became the client. A signature became a logo. A newsletter went out one week and hasn't stopped.
Mike Long is a writer, speechwriter, and educator with a client roster that runs across business, government, nonprofits, and policy. The range was not the problem. The sites were. Multiple properties, each doing part of the job, none of them doing the whole job, none of them tying his work together into a single voice. His domain was coming up on renewal and he had reached the point where maintaining several bifurcated pieces cost more than starting clean.
Mike also had an unusual seat at the table. As a writer he is almost always the vendor. This was one of the few engagements in his career where he was the client. He said, more than once, that it was a funny feeling.
We spent a lot of time on the logo. Monograms. Symbols. Type-only marks. Nothing was landing. At some point I said, why don’t we just try your signature. Mike went home, signed his name a bunch of different ways, and sent them over. We picked one and cleaned it up. That signature became the foundation of the identity. After we launched, he mentioned that he now actually signs his name that way in real life. A logo can change the person it belongs to. That is not a common outcome for a design project.
We tested a run of typefaces against the signature, looking for a companion that could carry body copy across everything from a book excerpt to a speech transcript to a newsletter blurb. We landed on a pairing that reads editorial without competing with the handwritten mark. Color took the same approach. Red, black, grey. Confident without shouting, personal without feeling flashy.
The site had one job, driving people to the newsletter. Everything else, the client roster, the online classes, the excerpts from the book, fed that outcome. We built the concept, reviewed it with Mike, and shipped the WordPress site with the whole information architecture pointed at that single funnel.
We mocked up the newsletter and coded it in Mailchimp so it went live the same week the site did. The design brief was maximum shareability. Whatever service someone opened it in, whatever they used to forward it, the template had to hold. It became the vessel for Mike’s weekly tips, tricks, and musings. He is still using the same template today.
About eighteen months ago, the Revolution Slider on the original site started acting out. Instead of chasing a plugin fix on aging software, we did a quick rebuild on modern WordPress. Virtually identical on the outside, brand new on the inside. The redesign that lasted a decade did not need to change its face. It needed a new engine underneath.
The best measure of a personal brand is not the launch. It is whether it still fits ten years later.
Since 2015. Referrals both directions. The shape of a real partnership, not a transaction.
Same Mailchimp template we coded at launch. Still in weekly rotation.
Handwritten mark that Mike now uses to sign his name in real life.
New WordPress engine underneath, virtually identical on the outside.
Positioning as writer + speechwriter + educator. Signature logo, typeface pairing, red/black/grey palette.
WordPress build with the whole architecture pointed at the newsletter. Mailchimp template coded to go live the same week.
Collaborated on the launch of Mike's award-winning book. Handed the property back when he took over managing it himself.
Revolution Slider on the original site started acting out. Rebuilt on modern WordPress instead of patching. Virtually identical on the outside, brand new inside.
Same identity, same newsletter template, new engine underneath. Ten-plus years in and still fitting.
Thirty-minute intro call with Mark. No slide deck, no pitch.
Book an intro call →